Facts & figures

On slums...

• Of the three billion people who live in urban settings, an estimated one billion live in slums

• People in Delhi's slums are amongst the 1.3 billion in the world who live in absolute poverty on less than US$1 per day

• Urban slums are the fastest-growing sector of India's population, expanding five times faster than rural areas

• The high prevalence of malnutrition in slums contributes to over 50% of child deaths

• 4 out of every 10 slum children are malnourished

• Slum clearance and relocation costs 10 times as much as slum upgrading as a method of dealing with urban poverty

• Absence of safe water and sanitation continues to trap millions of slum dwellers in a cycle of poverty and vulnerability

• In Asha slums, childhood deaths due to lower respiratory tract infections, diarrhoea and vaccine preventable diseases are no longer seen

• 85% children are healthy in Asha slums while the Delhi slum statistics are 20% healthy children and 80% malnourished

• Vaccination statistics in Asha slums are better than those of India as a whole

On gender inequality...

• One quarter of Indian girls do not live past the age of 15 and one third of these deaths occur before a girl reaches her first birthday

• Nearly 2 in every 3 women in India are illiterate

• Only 82 girls for every 100 boys are enrolled in school. 35 million girls do not attend school in India

• Girls aged between 1 and 5 years old are 50% more likely to die than boys

• There are 927 girls per 1000 boys under the age of 6 in India, a figure that is declining each year

On health...

• One child in every 11 dies during the first five years of life

• The number of child deaths annually is 2.5 million

• India has the highest TB prevalence in the world

• India has the highest incidence of under-5 deaths in the world

• India is one of only 4 countries in the world that is still endemic for Polio